The invention relates generally to a system and method for providing a searchable library of electronic documents to a user and more specifically to a system and method for providing a searchable library of electronic books which can be accessed by a user over a global computer network such as the Internet.
Book publishers publish many books only in hard copy form. In many instances these hard copy books are not available to individuals until the books reach retail stores or are available for purchase through mail order or on-line services. In order for an individual to have access to the contents of the hard copy book, the individual must either go to a retail store and purchase the book or order the book and wait for the book to be delivered. In both instances the book is not immediately available to the individual upon the individual desiring the book. In certain instances this causes a problem for an individual who requires instant information at time of day when retail bookstores are not open for business.
In addition, in order for an individual to determine if a book in hard copy form contains desired information, the individual must read the back cover, a summary of the book or scan the table of contents. This is a time consuming process and the information desired by the individual may still be located in the book, even if it is not identified in the summary or in the table of contents. There is no automatic mechanism for searching for key words in the text of a hard copy book. Further, many books published on the same topic may contain different information which is valuable to the individual. In many instances it is prohibitively expensive for an individual to purchase all the relevant books, and new books are constantly being published.
What is desired then is a system and method for providing a searchable library of electronic documents which is accessible to an individual at any time. What is also desired is a system and method for publishing a hard copy document in an electronic form which may be searched by an individual. The present invention permits such functionality.